Wednesday, January 13, 2016

The Historical Fallacy

I cringe slightly when a homilist
begins to talk about the Early Church—not that, as a Catholic, I feel there’s
anything to fear from them; au contraire.I cringe because too often the reason for
raising the specter of The Early Church seems to be a way of discrediting it—not
exactly as a bogeyman, but as a harmless ghost or gnome: a little old
fashioned, but really quite gemütlich
in its own preserve.

The most recent case in point involved
that curious series of Gospels read in the weekdays between Mary, the Mother of
God and the Baptism of the Lord.Despite
the intervention of the Three Kings at Epiphany and the proximity of Christmas,
these Gospels mostly seem to deal with standard healings and sermons from
various points in Jesus’s career.In
contrast to the Gospels for much of the remaining year, they are not
chronologically arranged (as far as a listener can tell), nor do they have an
obvious bearing on the feasts occurring nearby.

The explanation for this oddity, homiletically
provided (by the one priest who, to his credit, thought it interesting to offer
an explanation), was that The Early Church was full of Early Christians who
were generally very poor and very poorly educated.They had heard the Gospel in its simplest
form, and their understanding of the life of Christ and indeed of Christology
was apt to be fuzzy.Consequently, in
the days following the great feast of Christmas, the coming of the Child, the
Church took it upon herself to catechize listeners concerning “Who this Child
was.”

Such an explanation does present
a minor problem of liturgical history.While
the Mass itself is ancient, I would be surprised to hear that scholars have
been able to determine, with any certainty beyond that generally attaching to
the wildest academic conjecture, that we know exactly what Scripture readings
were read during what parts of the calendar year.But take it as possible, at least, that Early
Christians may have heard something like what we hear during these weeks after
Christmas; and take it is probable (if not certain) that many of them were
indeed poor and illiterate and in need of catechizing.

Nevertheless, I take umbrage.For as true as all those statements can be,
they do not answer the question of why we continue to hear these readings in
our current and by implication more enlightened age.Moreover, the introduction of such reasoning
concerning the rationale behind the gospels tacitly begs the question: Why do we
not change the readings?If these
apparently untopical and disorganized snippets were intended to meet a catechetical
need which is absent today, then why have they not been reformed?Vatican II reformed enough other things,
goodness knows.

The unstated implication of the
homily was that these readings were simply outdated.Unstated—because it was in fact never said
that they were, any more than Those Early Heretics who spoke of “Mary the
Mother of Jesus” made a habit of saying loudly “Mary, NOT the Mother of God.”But the implication there, and here, is clear
enough.And in the case of the post-Christmas
homily, the idea that the readings are outdated—not in itself an impossibility—was
the particularization of a rather more pernicious unstated idea: the principle
that when previous ages differ from ours, it is because of their ignorance or
bias.

It is a common historical fallacy: this idea that because a thing is old and belongs to people manifestly different from ourselves, it cannot be useful or true.The Early Church needed to hear these stories
because they were unlettered and untaught.The medievals believed in astrology because they were
superstitious.The Crusaders fought
because they were barbaric.Monarchs
insisted on religious unity because they were unenlightened despots.

The fallacy is common not only in
casual use—amongst homilists, journalists, and men on the street—but even and
perhaps especially amongst academics in the humanities, who ought by their
profession to know better.But somehow
the very depth of an academic’s historical knowledge can lead them deeper into
this fallacy than mere casual historical chauvinism does.For the academic knows not just that monarchs
insisted on religious unity, and were unenlightened despots, but also knows in
great detail what circumstances exactly prompted the desire to preserve
religious unity, and what measures were taken to do so: knows, in other words,
the rationale behind the despotism.But
rather than taking using this knowledge with a measure of understanding and
humility, the Academic tends to use it to explain away the actions of earlier
individuals and nations.But of course the Tudors insisted on
religious conformity: you see, they had inherited a dubious title from Henry
VII, were plagued with political dissent and disconcerted by the terrible Wars
of Religion taking place right across the channel … But of course their natural
bias would be towards having their people conform!And in the midst of it all, the Academic—who has
read, but not digested, the words of the Tudor writers themselves—forgets to inquire
whether perhaps, under the circumstances, the Tudors were politically wise, and
perhaps not wholly evil, in doing what they did.The Academic forgets, in other words, that in
such a situation he might have done a similar thing himself.

But of course Montaigne believed in cultural humility …

More perniciously still, the
Academic forgets that he probably does do similar things today.He does, in other words, probably do things
that would look inexcusable when judged by the standards of another age (past
or future) but which, taking our times into consideration, are “politically wise,
and perhaps not wholly evil.” Very few
of us are good enough and wise enough—in the full sense of that word “wise”—to see
and act beyond were we are now.And
indeed, that prudence which governs particular situations is so great a virtue
that ahistorical actions and judgments such as academics often think themselves
capable of are perhaps not to be desired so greatly.Perhaps the Academic not only does but should
be a little bit bound by the standards of his own age.

But he should at least know that
he is so bound, and use himself accordingly with humility towards those whom he
studies.Indeed, it is only by so
humbling himself that he might come to understand not only that which he
studies, but that wherein he lives and breathes—and ultimately, that which he is.Only the humble academic, humble enough to understand the real
attractiveness of religious unity, or the real plausibility of the governance
of the stars, has a chance of seeing how his own personal and cultural predilections
may mislead—or after all, rightly lead—him.And only a humble Christian, humble enough to appreciate following certain
seemingly outdated customs, has a chance of realizing how not only the Ancient Christians
but also the Modern would do well to take certain days after Christmas, certain
days to reflect on a seemingly eclectic series of readings designed to
illuminate the thing we never fully forget, but are perpetually in mortal danger
of ignoring: Who this Child Is.